A major commercial building has a huge amount of information related to its construction, maintenance and operation. This information is of a multitude of related and unrelated types, ranging from engineering information, such as the structural and architectural drawings of the firm's infrastructure and mechanical and electrical systems, to information pertaining to building's appearance, such as the color of the paint or floor covering in a particular room. Additionally, this information is collected and contained in many different forms; such as drawings, warranties, agreements, owner's manuals, receipts, system schematics, and other documents. Such information is highly important, indeed, sometimes critical, to the efficient operation and maintenance of a building. For example, when maintaining a building, it is important to know the operational details of mechanical and electrical systems in the building, where the systems are located, the specifics of the system components, the maintenance schedules for mechanical and electrical components, and where to order replacements for non-durable components of the systems (filters, etc.). It also is important to know whether, when systems or components thereof, fail, the systems or components are covered by warranties. It also is helpful to know who to contact for replacements or repairs.
Historically, building owners have received this information at the conclusion of construction, when the building owner took possession of the building. Typically, the building owner then would simply store this colossal amount of unrelated information in file rooms or storage facilities organized and searchable typically by only one characteristic. For example, paint was in the paint folder and the warranty for the toilet seat was in the toilet seat folder, or perhaps the supplier folder. This inefficient organizational system, however, has proved futile when a building owner or manager needs to find information quickly.
It frequently is desirable to locate building information pertinent to a specific section of a building, such as a specific room, or a specific floor of the building. In order to find such information, it has been necessary in the past for the building owner or building manager to sift through thousands of records, none of which are organized according to specific section. For example, all electrical information for a particular room is organized according to an electrical category, without linkage between any particular electrical component and the room in question. Similarly, other information specific to the room is not organized in a manner that facilitates retrieval for a specific room. Finally, the file integrity for files containing building information is often suspect. For example, when problems are experienced in a particular location of a building, it is not uncommon for all of the pertinent drawings to be removed from the files and taken to the location of the problem. Often times, the removed drawing is damaged before its return, is not returned, or is not returned to its proper file location.